For three weeks Morgan and his men held a devil’s carnival in Maracaibo.  To tell of the abominable tortures and cruelties which they inflicted upon the poor people, whom they dragged from their hiding-places in the surrounding country, would make our flesh creep and our blood run cold.  When they could do no more evil they sailed away up the lake for Gibraltar.

It is not necessary to tell the story of the taking of this town.  When Morgan arrived there he found it also entirely deserted.  The awful dread of the human beasts who were coming upon them had forced the inhabitants to fly.  In the whole town only one man was left, and he was an idiot who had not sense enough to run away.  This poor fellow was tortured to tell where his treasures were hid, and when he consented to take them to the place where he had concealed his possessions, they found a few broken earthen dishes, and a little bit of money, about as much as a poor imbecile might be supposed to possess.  Thereupon the disappointed fiends cruelly killed him.

For five weeks the country surrounding Gibraltar was the scene of a series of diabolical horrors.  The pirates undertook the most hazardous and difficult expeditions in order to find the people who had hidden themselves on islands and in the mountains, and although they obtained a great deal of booty, they met with a good many misfortunes.  Some of them were drowned in swollen streams, and others lost much of their pillage by rains and storms.

At last, after having closed his vile proceedings in the ordinary pirate fashion, by threatening to burn the town if he were not paid a ransom, Morgan thought it time for him to depart, for if the Spaniards should collect a sufficient force at Maracaibo to keep him from getting out of the lake, he would indeed be caught in a trap.  The ransom was partly paid and partly promised, and Morgan and his men departed, carrying with them some hostages for the rest of the ransom due.

When Morgan and his fleet arrived at Maracaibo, they found the town still deserted, but they also discovered that they were caught in the trap which they had feared, out of which they saw no way of escaping.  News had been sent the Spanish forces; of the capture and sacking of Maracaibo, and three large men-of-war now lay in the channel below the town which led from the lake into the sea.  And more than this, the castle which defended the entrance to the lake, and which the pirates had found empty when they arrived, was now well manned and supplied with a great many cannon, so that for once in their lives these wicked buccaneers were almost discouraged.  Their little ships could not stand against the men-of-war; and in any case they could not pass the castle, which was now prepared to blow them to pieces if they should come near enough.